On Media

Scott Brown campaign leaks reporter emails to Breitbart

By HADAS GOLD

08/25/2014 01:37 PM EDT

A lesson for today’s political journalists: Treat every email as though it will be publicly broadcast. Case in point: Emails between former Nashua Telegraph reporter Kevin Landrigan and the Scott Brown campaign were leaked to Breitbart ahead of a story by Landrigan about the Republican candidate’s involvement with Kadant, a Massachusetts company that has outsourced jobs.

The Brown campaign said it released the emails after Telegraph managing editor Jonathan Van Fleet tweeted a teaser to the article on Friday.

"Editing one last @Klandrigan story for @NashuaTelegraph Sunday paper about @SenScottBrown profiting from company that moves jobs to China," Van Fleet tweeted.

"Once the Nashua Telegraph tweeted details of their story, we felt it necessary to publicize our response and point out Jeanne Shaheen's record on outsourcing,” Brown spokesperson Elizabeth Guyton said in an email.

Breitbart blogger Dan Riehl published the emails soon after, calling the tweet “curious timing” that “may cause some to wonder if Democrat Jeanne Shaheen isn't outsourcing her campaign's opposition research function to the Nashua Telegraph newspaper.”

In one of the emails, Landrigan tells Brown campaign manager Colin Reed that he has received information about Sen. Shaheen’s own experience with outsourcing, writing that he’s “already been through her record in [the] senate and all I've seen is doctrinaire ie, support for partisan, senate (Democrat) moves to close offshore tax loopholes etc. If you've seen anything different that slipped through my sieve, I'm all ears.”

Another email shows responses to questions Kadant's executive vice president Thomas O'Brien sent to Landrigan.

Riehl goes on to question whether the story will mention Shaheen’s history with outsourcing and O’Brien’s answers. Landrigan's article ultimately mentions both.

In an interview, Nashua Telegraph Managing Editor Jonathan Van Fleet said the tweet was meant to be an homage to Landrigan, who was recently laid off from the Telegraph as it closed its statehouse bureau. Last week he was named chief political correspondent for a newly formed New Hampshire media company called NH1.

“Newspapers promote their weekend content all the time, and we save good stories for the Sunday paper, when circulation is higher and we ask people to pay a little extra. Once the insinuation was made that we were sitting on the story for some political reason, we decided to publish the story online and let it speak for itself,” Van Fleet wrote in a follow-up email. “As far as the Brown campaign's decision to release emails between Kevin and Kadant executives, it is completely theirs, nor did it change the fact that Scott Brown declined to be interviewed for the story.”

New Hampshire Democratic Party spokeswoman Julie McClain said on behalf of the Shaheen campaign that "it's no surprise that [he Brown] campaign stooped so low."

Van Fleet said the Telegraph has no interest in pushing one candidate over the other, pointing to the fact that the Telegraph editorial board endorsed Brown on Sunday for the Republican nomination, calling him "the clear choice." Either way, the incident stands as a warning to reporters that they are always part of their own stories.

UPDATE (2:50pm): In an email, Riehl said he remains pleased with his reporting and that it's keeping reporters accountable:

I was and remain pleased with the outcome and believe it achieved precisely what new media set out to do over a decade ago when I began as an independent blogger – let reporters know that they can and will be held to account for their decisions and stories. I also find it very much in line with the spirit of Andrew Breitbart – “a warning to reporters that they are always part of their own stories.”